"Oh, damn!" said Jack, flinging down his book.
He went into the other room with his made-up face, indifferent and morose. Helen's deep, compassionate eyes looked him over gravely as he entered.
"Jack," she said, "Theo and I want you to spend your Easter holidays with us in the Isle of Wight. Will you?"
He drew back a step, raised his eyes slowly and looked at her. Oh, it was no use to play a part; it might deceive every one else, but not her; she had read all his secrets from the first.
"What do you want me for? "
She smiled.
"Well, chiefly because we like you."
"Oh, do come!" Theo put in. "You can teach me to row, and -----"
"What do you want me for?" Jack repeated doggedly. He had come a little nearer, looking straight into her face. An insane desire to laugh was taking possession of him. Suppose she were ever to come across his uncle, or Mr. Hewitt, or Dr. Jenkins, and to hear what had happened last summer? Suppose he were to tell her himself, and let her choose whether she would invite him then or not? A kind of horrible internal mirth shook him at the thought of how she would snatch up her darling and flee. He had already learned that there are some things, to be accused of which is enough; nobody wants to hear about your innocence.
She came up to him, and put her hand on his shoulder. Well, he was behaving like a sneaking cad, of course, and sailing under false colours; but it would save him from Porthcarrick. And if he was such a beastly coward that he couldn't save himself the other way...
"Oh, yes, I'll come fast enough," he said; "if uncle will let me."
Helen stayed at the village inn till break-ing-up day, and every time that Jack saw her the soft and pitying eyes seemed to shame him, "like a scat in the face," he said to himself. But who was he that he should care for any blow across the cheek now, if it was not hard enough to hurt? He lived in hourly terror lest the Vicar should deem it necessary to forbid his accepting the invitation, and to explain to Dr. Cross the reason. But Mr. Raymond made no difficulties; he was thankful for any offer which would spare him his nephew's contaminating presence at Porthcarrick. He satisfied his conscience by writing a long letter to the boy, solemnly exhorting him not to abuse the kindness of his new friends. Jack read it through, tossed it into the fire and started for Southampton with Helen and Theo, saying to himself in cold disgust: "The filthy cad! He believes I'm all that, and he lets me go! And I'm no better."
All the way to Shanklin he kept assuring himself that he was going to enjoy to the full whatever pleasures the gods might grant, and put off thinking of anything else till the end of the holidays. He was safe for four months now, and could afford three weeks' happiness, surely. Other people were happy for years and years. For the first few days he wearied the household with his riotous high spirits; then, returning from the shore one afternoon and entering the little garden, he came upon Theo lying on the grass under the big laburnum tree, reading aloud to his mother, his head resting on her knee. She had one arm round the child's neck, and her other hand played with his hair as she listened. That night Jack lay and sobbed till he was sick and dizzy. Oh, it was unfair, unfair, unfair!
In the second week a new visitor arrived, a grey-headed man who called Helen by her Christian name, and whom Theo addressed as "Uncle Conrad." He proved to be not a relative, but an old and close friend of Helen's family, and a former fellow-prisoner of her husband. After spending several years in a Russian fortress on a general charge of seditious opinions, he had settled in Paris, where he was now a well-known and successful musical critic. He examined Theo severely in harmony, and found so many faults in his violin playing that the child, when finally released, dashed into the garden, where Jack found him in tears.
"It's all a sham!" he wailed. "Those English music masters are duffers — they don't know anything about it. They said I was getting on nicely, and Uncle Conrad has done nothing but grumble! I hold my bow too tight, and I slur the phrasing, and I can't play a bit!"
"Perhaps it's he that's a duffer," Jack suggested, racking his brains for consolation to give. Theo sat bolt upright, scandalised at such a heresy.
"Jack! Uncle Conrad is always right about music. And it's true, I know it is; I played hatefully to-day. I shall be just an amateur; I shall never play like Joachim — never, never!"
His distress was so passionate that Jack finally ran up the verandah steps to call Helen, as his own attempts at consolation had no effect. The glass door leading into the sitting-room was open, and as he came up to it he saw Helen and Conrad in the room, talking earnestly together in their native language. He could not understand the worls they said, but drew back instinctively, seeing the look on her face.
"Helen," the old man was saying, "it is a vocation, like the other. Who shall say it is less holy? I would not speak till I was quite sure; last year I only told you the child had talent. I tell you now that he has genius."
"If it is his vocation," she answered slowly, "he must follow it, and there is nothing more to say. I had hoped..." She raised her eyes suddenly to a picture hanging on the wall. Jack had often looked at it and wondered what it meant. It was a large photograph of a group of statuary, representing a colossal seated figure of a woman, with torn garments and chained hands, and with dead and dying men about her feet.
"God help me!" Helen said, and covered her face.
Jack slipped out silently. He had understood nothing beyond the bare fact that she was unhappy; but over this he pondered gravely, never having realised before that any one else in the world except himself could have a secret grief.
Before returning to Paris Conrad put Theo through a minute examination, testing his ear in various ways. On the last afternoon of his visit, when they were all sitting on the garden lawn, he called the child's attention to the peculiar intervals in the songs of certain birds.
"Remember, Theo, you don't stop learning music when you put down your instrument and go for a walk; every bird has got something to teach you. The best teacher I ever had was my pet sky-lark."
"Why, Conrad," said Helen; "you didn't keep a sky-lark in a cage, surely!"
He laughed.
"We were both in the same cage. It was in the prison in Moscow; I picked the bird up in the court-yard with a broken wing, and they let me keep it in my cell. It got nearly tame by the time the wing was cured."
"And did it stay with you afterwards?" Theo asked.
"No, it flew away, — lucky little mortal!"
Jack, apparently, was not listening; he was cutting his name, after the manner of boys, on the trunk of the laburnum tree. He left it half cut and swung himself off the bench in his lumpy, coltish fashion.
"I'm going to look at the rabbits."
He slouched away across the lawn with his hands in his pockets, whistling shrilly between his teeth: "Said the young Obadiah to the old Obadiah..." He had been distressingly addicted to comic songs of late, though he never could get the tunes right, having no ear.
"Jack!" Theo cried, trotting after him; "you're out of tune; it's F sharp!"
"Rather a loutish sort of lad for Theo to be so fond of, isn't he?" said Conrad, when the boys were out of hearing.
"I suppose so," Helen answered absently.
Theo came running back.
"Mummy, Jack's as cross as two sticks."
"Is he?"
"Yes; I wanted to look at the rabbits with him, and he told me to go and be damned."
"Don't tell tales," said Conrad.